- Management does not care about the employees, especially at entry-level (testers). People are viewed as resources and used as such.- Management does not take any feedback. Suggestions and/or complaints have no (positive) effect.- Profit is the only thing that matters. Clients are often sold solutions/contracts that employees cannot realistically perform/provide.- Absolutely no career development opportunity. Promotion occurs once in a blue moon: luck and tenure are valued over skills and merit.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Advice to Management is useless since no one cares about feedback in this company.Hopefully things will change with the latest buy-out by Keywords. Let's hope the new management is more professional and realizes that all employees are important and deserve to be treated like people, given opportunities to grow and develop their careers, and listened to when they have feedback from the trenches.

Doesn't Recommend

Disapproves of CEO

Babel Media Response

Feb 27, 2015 – Recruiting

Hi Thank you very much for your comments.

As you may have guessed, many things have changed since you were testing with Babel in the UK a few years back. The company has continued to evolve over the years and now with the Keywords group and all our new sister companies we are striving to make all our studios the very best workplaces that we can, and that starts with listening to our employees. I can't say that we are completely there yet, but we are working hard to make it happen.

Thank you again for taking the time to leave us a message!... MoreLess

Easy to get in, no experience necessary.Good place to begin if you are interested in QA/games.Light work atmosphereMeet lots of new peopleProjects change frequently, keeping things -somewhat- fresh (as much as QA can be)

Cons

All workers starts as Freelance, meaning non reliable work. If you work hard, and be friendly, you should get constant work.Not a lot of advancement opportunities, unless you get lucky. Takes about 3 years to become a Lead on average.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Let testers do evaluations on their Leads. You have a LOT of leads who are incompetent.

Its a great step into the industry and if you get lead or captain position you can get very much needed experience for future job in an actual production company.

The people are usually really great with a few people who have overly passive aggressive natures that refuse to listen due to having large egos. Nothing really different from any other job with over 200 employees, some you like, some you can do without.

Cons

The pay could be higher and people who get promotions usually get them because they throw temper tantrums if they hear someone else might get it and are then usually inept at the job.

- You don't know if you will work the day after. You've to wait an email between 7pm and 22.00 the evening before to know it.- Low salary.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

You have to revise the organizations of the schedule work. See how long is the project and tell the people how long the will stay (ex. 1 week, 1 months ecc). Eliminate the system of the email and tell the people the exact days with minimum 1 week in advance.

People are really kind, everybody is ready to help you if you need, objective evaluation system that allows you to improve, good training session which really prepares you for the job, you actually see people be promoted for merit, very calm and comfortable place, no bullyng or harassment, free coffee and fruit 2 days/week and, if all this is not enough, c'mon, they are paying you to play games all day long!

I started working there when I was in university and trying to get my first job related to translation.

Pros:

- Most coworkers are fun to work with.- Opportunity to work with people from all sorts of linguistic backgrounds.- Good way to get a general idea of what the video game industry is like.- You get to choose what days you can work.

Cons

- Pay is low and only suffices if you're a student.- On call basis: some months, you get called every day, other months, you get called once a month.- A lot of equipment is damaged.- Poorly organized schedules : last minute schedule changes, you sometimes get called or emailed between midnight and 5:30 am to be told you have to come to work the next day at 8 am, seats tend to change, testers have to sometimes guess if they have to come in the next day or not....

- HR does not care about the employees.- Unable to take days off.- Being sick ends up getting you fired.- If on call employees bring up company problems they are worried about they are not given work for weeks on end.- Testers get no benefits, terrible pay, and no secure work schedules.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

To Keywords management, destroy Babel. Fire their HR VP and hire someone who will care about your employees. Start from the ground up, you can not get anything from them.